Psychotropic prescribing patterns among adolescents in Northern Ireland presenting with psychotic symptoms during a 5- year period

Objective: to report new prescriptions of psychotropic medications among adolescents presenting with new onset psychotic symptoms during a five-year period. Methods: The Northern Ireland Early Onset Psychosis Study (NIEOPS) is a naturalistic longitudinal observational study of patients with an early onset first psychotic episode. All patients aged less than 18 years presenting to specialist mental health services across Northern Ireland with new onset psychotic symptoms between 2001 and 2006 were recruited (n = 113). Clinical case notes were analysed retrospectively for details of subsequent treatment with psychotropic medications. Results: A total of 100 patients (88.5%) were prescribed some form of psychotropic medication. Over three-quarters of patients received an antipsychotic as their first medication. Risperidone (45.8%), olanzapine (24.0%) and chlorpromazine (12.5%) were the most commonly prescribed first-line antipsychotic medications. Of a total of 160 antipsychotic prescriptions, 81 (50.6%) were off-label. Prescriptions were most likely to have been deemed off-label due to medications not being licensed in under-18s (71.6% of off-label prescriptions) but other reasons were medications being used outside licensed age ranges (23.5%) and outside licensed indications (4.9%). Conclusions: This is the first study examining psychotropic prescribing patterns in a complete sample of all children and adolescents presenting with early onset psychotic episodes in a single geographical area. The observation of risperidone as the most commonly-prescribed antipsychotic was in keeping with previous studies in child and adolescent populations. Rates of off-label prescribing were lower than previously observed although our study was the first to investigate offlabel prescribing solely in children and adolescents presenting with psychotic symptoms.